The Crime Prevention Division was the first big step that MPD created to help with the safety of citizens in the city of Milwaukee. The unit was created in the mid-1980s and had about a dozen members with a few supervisors to help run the unit. The members initially went to several seminars and conferences across the state and country to get a background in crime prevention. We created many of the handouts like personal safety, robbery prevention, home safety, sexual assault awareness, from the training we received. Items like pinning windows to open about two inches with nails and what to use on doors are things we taught to citizens. At the Fire and Police Academy we had a walk-through downstairs with displays we built with doors and windows to show people how they worked.
This was a very popular unit, and we had many requests for our services at schools, and different businesses around the city. Some groups came to the Academy for tours of the building and the window/door alley was very popular. We went out to neighborhoods for talks and starting block watches. My partner and I went out to several hospitals to talk with nurses regarding personal safety. There was some safety issues and the hospitals wanted us to give them tips on how to deal with certain situations going and coming to work. We recommended safety devices to use like pepper spray and whistles to make noise. One point we advised was that no one can tell you weather you should fight or not if you are attacked. You will have to decide that yourself depending on the situation. Another tip we gave was to yell “fire” instead of help if being attacked. People don’t respond to help but will look up if someone is yelling fire.
One of my duties was playing McGruff the crime dog with the complete outfit, the dog head and the trench coat. It was quite hot with all of this on and before the air-conditioned units they have these days. We were on our way down to the City of Festivals parade downtown where I was going to ride in the parade. I was riding in a vehicle with a detective and a female officer was riding in another vehicle in front of us. The female officer was attractive, and another vehicle kept pulling in front of to try and talk with her. We warned the driver several times we were the police and to leave her alone. He refused and we pulled over with the driver getting out. We talked and he finally grabbed his groin and said F the police with a crowd gathering. I chased him over a fence through yards and caught him three blocks over. As we laid on the ground, he said I didn’t think you would catch me with those Stacy Adams on. We took him back to the scene and the crowd cheered when we put him in the wagon. We continued to the parade, and I rode the whole route in my McGruff outfit.
The Crime Prevention Division is no longer around but I think it could do a lot of good in todays environment.